KYIV
\nThe United States has warned of \u201ccatastrophic consequences\u201d if Moscow uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, after Russia\u2019s foreign minister said regions holding widely-criticised referendums would get full protection if annexed by Moscow.
\nVotes were staged for a third day in four eastern Ukrainian regions, aimed at annexing territory Russia has taken by force. The Russian parliament could move to formalise the annexation within days.
\nBy incorporating the areas of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia into Russia, Moscow could portray efforts to retake them as attacks on Russia itself, a warning to Kyiv and its Western allies.
\nUS National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States would respond to any Russian use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine and had spelled out to Moscow the \u201ccatastrophic consequences\u201d it would face.
\n\u201cIf Russia crosses this line, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia,\u201d Sullivan told NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d television program. \u201cThe United States will respond decisively.\u201d
\nThe latest US warning followed a thinly veiled nuclear threat made on Wednesday by President Vladimir Putin, who said Russia would use any weapons to defend its territory.
\nForeign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the point more directly at a news conference on Saturday after a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York in which he repeated Moscow\u2019s false claims to justify the invasion that the elected government in Kyiv was illegitimately installed and filled with neo-Nazis.
\nAsked if Russia would have grounds for using nuclear weapons to defend annexed regions, Lavrov said Russian territory, including territory \u201cfurther enshrined\u201d in Russia\u2019s constitution in the future, was under the \u201cfull protection of the state\u201d.
\nBritish Prime Minister Liz Truss said Britain and its allies should not heed threats from Putin, who had made what she called a strategic mistake as he had not anticipated the strength of reaction from the West.
\n\u201cWe should not be listening to his sabre-rattling and his bogus threats,\u201d Truss told CNN in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
\n\u201cInstead, what we need to do is continue to put sanctions on Russia and continue to support the Ukrainians.\u201d
\n\u2018Bogus threats\u2019
\nUkraine and its allies have dismissed the referendums as a sham designed to justify an escalation of the war and a mobilisation drive by Moscow after recent battlefield losses.
\nRussian news agencies quoted unidentified sources as saying the Russian parliament could debate bills to incorporate the new territories as soon as Thursday. State-run RIA Novosti said Putin could address parliament on Friday.
\nRussia says the referendums, hastily organised after Ukraine recaptured territory in a counteroffensive this month, enable people in those regions to express their view.
\nLuhansk\u2019s regional governor said Russian-backed officials were going door to door with ballot boxes and if residents failed to vote correctly their names were taken down.
\n\u201cA woman walks down the street with what looks like a karaoke microphone telling everyone to take part in the referendum,\u201d Luhansk governor Serhiy Gaidai said in an interview posted online.
\n\u201cRepresentatives of the occupation forces are going from apartment to apartment with ballot boxes. This is a secret ballot, right?\u201d
\nThe territory controlled by Russian forces in the four regions represents about 15% of Ukraine, of roughly the size of Portugal. It would add to Crimea, an area nearly the size of Belgium that Russia claims to have annexed in 2014.
\nUkrainian forces still control some territory in each region, including about 40% of Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia\u2019s provincial capital. Heavy fighting continued along the entire front, especially in northern Donetsk and in Kherson.
\nPresident Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who insists that Ukraine will regain all its territory, said on Sunday some of the clashes had yielded \u201cpositive results\u201d for Kyiv.
\n\u201cThis is the Donetsk region, this is our Kharkiv region. This is the Kherson region, and also the Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia regions,\u201d he said in nightly video remarks.
\nIn a statement on Facebook, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said Russia had launched four missile and seven air strikes and 24 instances of shelling on targets in Ukraine in the past 24 hours, hitting dozens of towns, including some in and around the Donetsk and Kherson regions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV The United States has warned of \u201ccatastrophic consequences\u201d if Moscow uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, after Russia\u2019s foreign minister said regions holding widely-criticised referendums would get full protection if annexed by Moscow. Votes were staged for a third day in four eastern Ukrainian regions, aimed at annexing territory Russia has taken by force. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-285905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n